*NSFL Predictions Results

[howsour]

Season 21 Predictions Point Task Results Consolidation

Hello Everyone, I decided it would be interesting to aggregate the Season Predictions Point Task to see where the league believes each team will finish. So, I took some time to consolidate the results and simply report the findings back to everyone. I had believed that the results would match quite closely to a sort of community power rankings; although these results are strictly the preseason guesses when TPE is on the line.

Overall, there were a total of 241 submissions (and I do not envy the poor soul who has to grade all of these). However, you may notice throughout the following charts that there may be some discrepancies in the numbers. For whatever reason some submissions included ties for certain places, some did not include a regular season winner selection, and some selected their regular season winner selection as a team who they had finishing second in their respective conference. There is also the possibility of some human error when I went through and gathered the data as I had to manually fill in the table post by post.

The methodology is quite simple and I will explain the different columns in the tables here. The Average Position is going to be just that – the average place each team was selected to finish within the conference throughout all 241 entries. The Picked as Winner column is simply a sum of how many times that team was selected as the overall regular season champion across both divisions. The Times Picked X columns are the number of teams each team was selected to finish at each place within the division. I will first present each Conference separately and walk you through some of the results.

NSFC



As you can see above, the Yellowknife Wraiths were selected to finish on average the best in the conference. However, it is interesting to note that they were selected to finish as the overall regular season champion fewer times than the Colorado Yeti. The Wraiths were also selected to finish first within the conference fewer times than the Yeti by quite a significant margin. This is because the Yeti were selected to finish 3rd through 5th a bit more and thus lowering their average position. From the results, it is also clear that there is a general consensus among the participants that the NSFC is a two horse race. It is also clear that there is a consensus for the Baltimore Hawks to finish 3rd, the Philadelphia Liberty to finish 4th, and the Chicago Butchers to finish last. The frequency of these selections was astounding to me as it seems to indicate there is a clear hierarchy in the NSFC. You can further see a visualization of this hierarchy in the below pie chart.



ASFC



The ASFC picks yielded quite different results than the NSFC table. Even while entering the results; it was evident to me that the ASFC was more variable in terms of finishing positions. There is a rather slim margin between the New Orleans Second Line and Austin Copperheads/ Orange County Otters in terms of average positioning, despite there being a large difference in the number of times the Second Line were picked to finish first within the conference. Additionally, you can see that between the top 3 teams, there was not a huge margin of difference in regards to the number of times each team was selected as the regular season champion. Interestingly enough, despite being picked first 121 times, the Second Line were projected to finish last 400% more than the Copperheads or the Otters (although it is a small sample size). All of this suggests that the ASFC is more of a wide open race between the top 3 teams. Although, it is still obvious that there is consensus that the Arizona Outlaws will finish in 4th and the San Jose Sabercats will finish in last. You will be able to see a visualization of the more “wide open” race below.



NSFL

I decided to aggregate the results from each conference and consolidate the findings into a single chart to create a “community projections” of sorts. Obviously, this methodology is not flawless as finishing 5th within ones conference does not necessarily mean you will be the 9th or 10th team overall given that one conference may be stronger than the other, but with the data provided it was difficult to make any other sort of extrapolations. It would be interesting to see how these compare to any other sort of power rankings and perhaps I will do that analysis in the future.



These consolidated power rankings suggest that the top two teams (the Wraiths and the Yeti) within the NSFC are the strongest teams in the league by quite a significant margin. This is followed by the top 3 in the ASFC (the Second Line, the Copperheads, and the Otters). We can also see a visualization of this assertion in the below graph.



As you can see by this graph, roughly a quarter of all participants selected the regular season winner to be from the NSFC, suggesting that the NSFC is the better conference, or at least that the best teams in the league are within the NSFC. Another way of reading this data is that the general population who participated in the point task believes that an NSFC team is roughly 2.5x more likely to be the regular season champion than an ASFC team.

Conclusion

To finish this, I think it is very important to point out the inherent bias for participants who are a part of an NSFL organization. Although I did not collect data on each individual’s responses compared to what team they were a part of, I got the general sense from looking at the signatures below each post that an individual was way more likely to place their team higher than the average participant would. This is was even more apparent for the winner picks. I also believe that there existed some negative biases for some users as it seemed they would project a highly placed team into last place. Whether this is because that team may represent a rival, because it may be a strategy to be a contrarian to maximize TPE gains, or for some other reason, I am not sure of the cause, but I would say these were more often outliers.

I also saw some of what I would call “recent post” bias for some users. I would see a string of very similar selections, winner picks, or even the exact same picks all clustered within a page on the forum. I particularly saw this phenomenon in regards to Season 21 DSFL rookies who may not know too much information about each team as I would guess many would make picks similar to the picks they had seen. I also think another possibility for this could be teams posting this TPE opportunity in their locker room and finishing completing the point task at about the same time. It was just interesting to see 4 or 5 users select the Otters as regular season champions in a row.

Lastly, I want to give my sincerest commiserations to the Chicago Butchers who were only placed 1st once and were never selected as regular season champions. For all other teams, I saw at least one current player select their team as the overall champion – but not Chicago. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this article and would love to hear some opinions of whether the results match what one would expect.

Word Count 1,265

[Unicorn]

imagine having austin winning the asfc lol

[br0_0ker]

my sincerest commiserations to the Chicago Butchers who were only placed 1st once and were never selected as regular season champions. For all other teams, I saw at least one current player select their team as the overall champion – but not Chicago.

No commiseration necessary, our goal is not to win the 1st seed or the regular season, our goal is to win a championship, which you only need to be a wildcard team to do. We are open in our LR about our seasonal expectations, it would have been disingenuous to posit expectations of anything greater than the 3rd or 2nd seed at best, so it makes sense our players would have an informed vote.

Whoever put SJS or Philly as season champs is delusional and sacrificing TPE for their homerism.

[Isidore94]

If you all want easy TPE just use my power rankings. It'll net you 80% of the TPE or your money back